Foxes of the World: All 12 True Foxes, and the Ones That Aren't

'Fox' is a shape, not a taxon. Small canid, pointed muzzle, big ears, long bushy tail — that description has been applied to species across four different genera and two continents' worth of independent evolution. If you want to talk about fox species precisely, the place to start is the genus Vulpes.

The 12 true foxes (genus Vulpes)#

A few of these deserve a second look. The Tibetan sand fox has an oddly squared-off face — a genuinely unusual skull shape, not an artefact of internet photographs — and hunts plateau pika, often shadowing brown bears that dig the pika out. Blanford's fox is a cliff specialist with semi-retractile claws and naked pads that let it climb near-vertical rock. The Cape fox is the only true fox in sub-Saharan Africa.

The foxes that are not Vulpes#

• Grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) — North and Central America. Its own ancient genus, and one of very few canids that regularly climbs trees, using hooked claws to reach nests and escape coyotes.
• Island fox (Urocyon littoralis) — a dwarfed grey fox found only on California's Channel Islands. Its recovery from near-extinction in the 2000s is one of the fastest documented for any mammal.
• Bat-eared fox (Otocyon megalotis) — East and southern Africa. Eats termites almost exclusively and has extra molars to process them: up to 50 teeth, more than any other placental land mammal.
• Crab-eating fox, Darwin's fox, hoary fox and the other South American 'zorros' — genus Lycalopex and relatives. Genetically closer to wolves and jackals than to true foxes, despite looking the part.

Which species are in trouble#

Most true foxes are listed as Least Concern, which reflects a general truth about the group: generalists with broad diets and flexible territories weather habitat change better than specialists. The exceptions are informative.

1. Darwin's fox (Endangered) — a few hundred animals in two disjunct Chilean populations, threatened by dogs, disease and habitat fragmentation.
2. Island fox — six subspecies, some reduced to fewer than 100 individuals by golden eagle predation and canine distemper, now largely recovered through captive breeding.
3. Arctic fox in Fennoscandia — critically endangered regionally, squeezed by historic trapping and northward-expanding red foxes.
4. Blanford's fox and Tibetan sand fox — secure for now, but poorly surveyed; both depend on prey species under pressure.

If you are trying to identify a fox in the field rather than in a table, start with range: in most places only one or two species are plausible. Then check the tail tip, ear backs and leg colour — the details in the red fox field guide apply across the genus.

How to work out which fox you are looking at#

Start with geography, because it eliminates most of the list immediately. In Britain, Ireland and most of Europe there is exactly one candidate: the red fox. In the eastern United States, red and gray fox. In the American Southwest, add kit fox and swift fox. On the tundra, red and Arctic. In the Sahara, fennec, Rüppell's and pale fox.

Then use three features in order: tail tip colour, ear size relative to the head, and overall build. Those three separate almost every pair of species that share a range, and they work at distances where coat colour has already become unreliable — the reasoning behind the field marks in what does a fox look like.